Constant change downtown is quickening

Downtown San Antonio has been constantly evolving over the last half-century. Something new is always being built or upgraded.

HemisFair ’68 for the ’68 World’s Fair, the Alamodome, renovations of the Majestic and Charline McCombs Empire theaters, numerous new hotels, the International Center, Weston Centre, the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts and the Briscoe Western Art Museum, to name a few.

Somehow, one project seemed to lead to another, then another.

Lately, the pace of development has accelerated. Hemisfair’s reconstruction and the expansion of the Shops at Rivercenter are already near completion, but faster change is promised by several projects still in the planning stages.

On the drawing boards are new hotels near the Tobin Center and an office/hotel tower overlooking Main Plaza. CPS Energy will be relocated from its aging River Walk headquarters to a site near the Tobin Center, opening other possibilities along the River Walk.

Nothing might spark more change downtown than the planned 23-story “new Frost Tower,” cater-corner from the bank’s current headquarters. That’s part of a complex real-estate swap in which Frost Bank will sell its existing Houston Street building to the city and then occupy 60 percent of the new Frost Tower to be built by developer Weston Urban, while City Hall consolidates scattered departments into the existing Frost Bank building.

Throw in millennials’ preference for urban living, and downtown San Antonio will churn with change like never before, especially as startup technology companies fill in vacant downtown office space.

The upcoming surge was the topic of a luncheon this week at existing Frost Bank building tenant Plaza Club by the Family Service Association, an organization holding a series of “transformation” fundraising events.

“Once up, we hope the new (Frost Bank) tower will bring more people downtown,” perhaps corporate headquarters, Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. Chief Financial Officer Jerry Salinas said during the luncheon.

Salinas updated the timetable to explain that the new Frost Tower will be constructed in 2017 and 2018, opening in early 2019.

“We are proud that our newest building (for the statewide banking company) will be in our own hometown,” he said.

Frost Bank will employ about 650 at the new building, but more employees, about 1,200, already work in the One Frost campus near SeaWorld San Antonio.

Weston Urban anticipates more downtown workers and plans to build about 400 apartments near its new Frost Tower building, said Lorenzo Gomez, executive director of the 80/20 Foundation established by Graham Weston of Weston Urban. Weston also is a co-founder and chairman of Rackspace Hosting Inc.

“Residential is the last missing piece” for the transformation of downtown, Gomez said. Millennials want to walk and bike more than drive, Gomez said. They will be become more civically engaged the less time they spend in cars and traffic, he added.

They also want open, collaborative spaces at work, and the One Frost campus already provides those, as will the new downtown tower, Salinas said. “We need to make sure we are moving in that direction,” he said.

The luncheon discussion ranged further to education, and the growing plethora of charter schools in the inner city, to the downtown arts district. Gomez said an arts district can inspire creation in business offices. “That’s where the arts come in,” Gomez said.

He recommended that arts organizations cluster in one downtown area so people can park in one place and walk to a choice of several attractions.

Some lamented that San Antonio doesn’t yet have a corridor, like Austin’s Sixth Street, where singles can mix and meet — “where other young people are,” as Gomez said.

But Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who attended the luncheon, said afterward such a bar-restaurant-live music stretch is beginning to form along North St. Mary’s Street. It can border on The Pearl retail-office-residential complex, Wolff said.

It’s the same near-downtown St. Mary’s Strip that was a hopping place in the 1980s and then all but died about two decades ago, partially because the area became unsafe. The strip now is revitalizing, Wolff said.

“The city will have to take care of the streets and the lighting” along the St. Mary’s Strip, he said, “But it’s coming together. It needs to be a cluster of small venues. People like to jump from one place to another.”

Downtown San Antonio is being transformed and stretched in different directions. It’s beginning to project an image of a downtown that has everything. That’s healthy. A static downtown is one that dies. As downtown changes, the core of the city’s economy becomes more vibrant.

David Hendricks joined the San Antonio Express-News in February 1976 after receiving a bachelor of journalism degree in December 1975 from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1981, he obtained a master's degree in English literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He worked seven years on various beats for the Metro desk before working in 1983 at the Express-News Capitol Bureau in Austin, returning to San Antonio later that year and joining the business section. Hendricks was business editor from 1986 to 1992 and started his business column in 1989. His column now appears twice a week. He also covers international business, chambers of commerce and CC Media Holdings Inc. Hendricks also contributes classical music concert reviews, book reviews and travel articles. He is married to Lucila Hendricks. They have a daughter, Emily.